The present invention is directed to the art of unloading a silo, and particularly to silo unloader of the bottom unloading type, wherein silage is conveyed toward a central opening in the silo floor, to drop down a chute from that opening, into a zone beneath the silo floor, and then to be delivered from that zone to a point outside the silo, by means of an exit auger. Similar devices have been developed in the past, which as are shown in my U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,095,703 and 4,057,151. Such devices work very well, most particularly when silage is of the type that may be highly compacted, and perhaps damp, requiring substantial power to move the silage.
The present invention is directed to silo unloaders of the bottom unloader types, in which it is desired to unload a highly granular silage product; one that is either semi-free flowing or free flowing. An example of such silage would be dried corn kernels, which do not tend to stick one to the other, but readily flow into various areas and voids, rather than tending to form a silage bridge at the bottom of the silo. One feature of unloading highly granular silage is that the power requirements are less than when unloading highly damp, compacted silage.
To this end, the present invention is addressed to silage unloaders of the granular type, wherein free flowing material, or semi-free flowing material is used.